Survival and Growth of Meat Bacteria under Low Temperature Storage

Abstract

Fresh meat is a highly perishable product due to its biological composition, which frequently leads to foodborne diseases.
This study focuses on aerobic bacteria counts of fresh meat during storage periods, and helped to determine dates of minimum durability.
Cultures of 963 samples of fresh meat (beef, pork and chicken) were purchased from a retail shop.
The Samples were kept in a refrigerator at 0°C, 4°C and 10°C for 1 to 2 weeks under normal aerobic packing conditions, and the aerobic bacteria countS of coliforms, Salmonella and psychrophilic bacteria were examined.
The detected aerobic bacteria were incubated at 30°C and 35°C for 48 hours using standard plate count agar plates.
The isolation of aerobic bacteria from samples was better at 30°C than at 35°C, and there were significant differences between the efficiency of the two cultures.
As bacteria counts increased, the manifestations of spoilage (slime, odor, color, and flavor changes) were noticeable on meat when bacteria numbers reached about 10⁷cfu/g.